02. Municipal Financing

Alberta’s two largest cities build and maintain essential infrastructure like roads, public transit, water and wastewater plants, that serves over half of Alberta’s population; however, cities have only three sources of revenue (property taxes, user fees, and transfers from other orders of government) to pay for critical infrastructure. The ability of the cities to keep providing services and continue to build needed infrastructure in response to growth is eroding quickly. For example, the Green Line, Calgary’s next planned Light Rail Transit (LRT) Line that will connect North Calgary with Southeast Calgary, will cost $5 billion while the total City budget is $3 billion.

Question: How would your party provide long-range, sustainable, predictable capital funding for Alberta’s large cities?